


Who Is He?

by Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Gosh These Tags Are Dark, Hidden Depths, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Service Dogs, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, Team as Family, but so is the fic so i guess its ok, i guess, imposter syndrome, might delete later, suicide ideation, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:35:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat/pseuds/Never_Eat_Sour_Wheat
Summary: Because if he's not Tommy Coolatta... then who is he?
Relationships: Tommy Coolatta & Everyone, sodashipping is implied - Relationship
Kudos: 23





	Who Is He?

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say, very quickly and very importantly, that you SHOULD call the suicide prevention hotline if you are feeling suicidal or like you might seriously harm yourself. Tommy's (and mine, but you didn't hear that from me) experience with it is bad, but that doesn't mean that all will be, and that doesn't mean that they don't help or save lives. I'll leave the American number below, because if you're in pain, I want you to get help. I don't have the mental capacity right now to help personally, but reach out to loved ones or this number if you feel like you need to. I love you all very much, and please take care of yourselves.
> 
> 800-273-8255

It started genuinely. Tommy had been taught when he was young that he was supposed to express his emotions. He was supposed to let people know when he was sad, he was supposed to let people know when he was angry, everyone was supposed to, and if he did, people would follow his example. That’s what they’d called him at school, a leader. People liked him, and they looked to him for guidance, especially his friends. And he would supply it with a smile, because he was happy, and he was supposed to let people know when he was feeling something.

As he got older, he got less happy.

It’s a natural part of growing up, really. When you’re a kid, you don’t have too much to worry about (in theory), and you can spend your time playing and having a good time. As you get older, you have more and more to worry about. School, learning to drive, finding work, higher education, finding a place to live, taxes, all sorts of things, and they only pile up more and more as you get older and older. Getting less happy is just part of growing up. Not necessarily getting sad, but getting less happy.

But people didn’t want Tommy to.

When he would have a quiet day and wouldn’t feel like smiling, people would ask what was wrong. They didn’t want to listen, they just wanted him to stop being sad. Tommy was the happy one, in every friend group, in every class, in every aspect of his life. People expected him to be happy, and when he wasn’t, they were upset. He was the therapist friend, the one you went to whenever you had a problem, and when he was sad you couldn’t talk to him about your own problems. So you made him happy again just so you could vent.

Tommy had been taught to show his emotions, but he felt like he had to hide them.

When he got tired of people asking what was wrong, only for them to shift uncomfortably when he told them and then bulldoze over the conversation with their own problems, he just stopped telling them what was wrong. It was always, “nothing, I just didn’t sleep well last night,” or, “I’m just worried about a test in one of my classes, but I’ll be fine”. And then he’d listen, and he’d give his best advice, and he’d watch as they didn’t take it and blamed him, or they did and when it didn’t work, they’d blame him. And he’d just shrug and laugh awkwardly and tell them he was sorry. 

It’s no different at Black Mesa. If an experiment goes wrong, you go to Tommy to vent about it and everything that you wish had gone right. If you’re having a bad day, you go to Tommy and gripe to him about it. If you’re frustrated with late nights and intense research, you go to Tommy and you ask him to cover for you so you can take a nap in the break room. 

And he does. Because that’s who Tommy is.

Or, at least, that’s who Tommy is supposed to be.

When he’s alone, Tommy is a shell of “himself”. He lies on the couch and stares at nothing, or he’ll scroll endlessly through social media, not interacting with anything and just looking. He lies in bed and watches any YouTube video that looks like it’ll hold his interest for even a second, and when it doesn’t, he doesn’t care enough to turn it off. He’ll pull out some game, load it up, and then stare at the menu screen or wherever he spawned, if he can get that far, and never play. He’ll stare at his computer screen, knowing he’s supposed to write something for work, but unable to get his fingers to move because he just doesn’t care.

And that’s what it is, really. Tommy doesn’t care. He smiles, and laughs, and listens, and does so for others, but he just doesn’t care when it comes to himself. He’s lost the ability to. He cares about presenting himself to others as who he used to be when he was a kid, who everyone decided he was back then and never let him grow into who he is now. But who he is now doesn’t matter. No one sees it but him, so why should he care?

His dad tries to help, but he doesn’t know what to do. He gets Tommy a therapist, a psychiatrist, people who are trained to help him in a way that his dad can’t, and he makes sure that Tommy actually goes to see them, and he makes sure that Tommy listens to them, and he makes sure that Tommy takes his medication, but other than that, he doesn’t know what to do. It’s frustrating, but Tommy doesn’t blame his dad. He adopted Tommy when he was a bright eyed thing who genuinely loved life and the world, and now he’s become so desolate that he wouldn’t be surprised if his dad doesn’t really know who he is anymore. And Tommy’s to blame for that, he thinks, because he hid this from his dad too. Not as long or as much as he hid it from others, but his dad couldn’t have known, because Tommy’s good at hiding. That’s why he’s still doing it.

Sunkist helps. She’s always helped, he made her to help. She’ll lie with him, or on him, and she’ll bring him his medication, and when he really feels like he can’t leave the house, her need for a walk will make him get up and at least go to his front yard, and her need to be fed gets him out of bed when he feels like he can’t. But, in a way, he feels like that’s a detriment too. He knows that getting out of bed and taking his medication and leaving the house will help, but he doesn’t care enough to try. But he made Sunkist to help, and she does as much as she possibly can.

Tommy thinks that his friends know. They have to at least a little, because his friends now actually do care. They can tell when something really is wrong, and when he does choose to talk about it, they actually do listen. But when he says he doesn’t want to talk about it, they don’t push. And they shouldn’t, that’s a boundary he’s set up, but he wishes they would. Because it’s more lies. It’s not hidden behind a smile and a laugh anymore, but it’s hidden by his own reassurance that he’ll be okay. And that’s not their fault, it’s his, but he still wishes that he didn’t have to do the work to fix it.

Sometimes he wonders about what would happen if he stopped taking his medication. Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he took _all_ his medication. Sometimes he thinks about the day, in his teens, when his dad finally realized that he needed to put the knives somewhere Tommy wouldn’t find them. Sometimes he thinks about the night that he listened to that one sad song on repeat for so long that he went to where the knives were (because he’d found them a few days ago and hadn’t told his dad) and he stared at them for fifteen minutes. He managed to shut the drawer and call the suicide prevention hotline. It was a joke. They didn’t listen either. He sometimes thinks about how he finally managed to wake up his dad and after half an hour of tears and panic and hatred his dad took him to the ER since there was nowhere else to go at three in the morning. He thinks about how they gave him something he didn’t know he was allergic to and he had to spend a week in a mental hospital because they thought it was best.

Maybe it was. He doesn’t remember. It was so long ago, he was only fifteen. And now he’s thirty-seven, and isn’t that wild? He’s made it another twenty-two years with so little improvement, and it’s all thanks to his smile that he can hide anything behind. He doesn’t hurt himself, until he does. It’s so easy to tell himself that he doesn’t, because he _doesn’t_ , except he does. There’s no knives, no cuts, no blood, usually there isn’t even bruises. But slamming your fists into your head is hurting yourself, and scratching your arms til there’s marks is hurting yourself, and throwing yourself onto the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of you is hurting yourself. Not taking care of yourself is hurting yourself too, in a way.

And still, he smiles. He smiles as Benrey holds his hands so he doesn’t hit himself. He smiles as Dr. Coomer tries to distract him with facts from Wikipedia. He smiles as Bubby is actually soft for once and tells him what he actually means to him. He smiles as Mr. Freeman makes him something to eat because he hasn’t eaten all day but he can’t stand up from the couch. He smiles as Darnold tells him he loves him while he’s crying into his shoulder. He smiles as his dad asks how he’s been, and he lies to him and tells him he’s been doing a little better.

And he wishes he could stop, but he doesn’t know how.

Because if he’s not smiling, then he’s not Tommy Coolatta. 

And if he’s not Tommy Coolatta, then… who is he?

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say real quick, as well, that I'm alright. The more personal stuff in this fic (which you could probably pick up what that was osnfsainf) happened years ago, and I'm doing better. I'm just having a rough day and reflecting a lot, and felt like putting this out there. If it resonates with you, I hope it does it in a helpful way. Love you all <3


End file.
